Notes for Next Year

Wifey made the excellent point that I should stop telling her what I plan to do next year and write it down somewhere.

Firstly, harvest frequently. Otherwise, you get one of these (it’s a Trombocino, AKA, The Penis Squash):

OK, so, maximally two of any kind of squash. Seriously. No, seriously. I don’t care how many you started.

I actually seemed to do OK with the tomatoes– Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Principe Borghese, Celebrity, and Sungold. Skip the yellow pears and Oregon Star. The Pineapple tomato from Territorial was pretty good. Hard to have too many tomatoes what with drying and making sauce. Easy to have too many squash.

Even determinate tomatoes will get bigger than you think. Give them more than a hokey cage. They’ll just overflow it and fall on the ground.

Tomatillos produce like they’re insane. Two or three at most. They sprawl everywhere. Give them room.

Speaking of sprawling, melons are fun. Consider finding a place to let them sprawl– especially canteloupe. They’ll grow on a trellis, but if you miss it when they slip, they’ll splatter on the ground.

Butternuts and kabocha, on the other hand, do great on trellises. The fruit holds on until you cut it off.

Plant whole patches of onions, garlic, and edamame. Stagger the edamame by a couple of weeks.

Do not plant whole patches of cabbage. A couple of heads will feed us for the season. Maybe four if you make kraut. Cauli and broc are gone soon. Be prepared to plant something else there. It’s not too late.

Bush beans: stagger them. Scarlet runners: about the best plant ever. Peas: Eh… mostly symbolic, I think. Plant a few, but don’t
allocate too much space to them. Oh, sweet peas, though, are great. Put them somewhere you can harvest them regularly.

Think carefully about cukes. I have jars and jars of pickles from about three vines. That’s not bad, but be sure you know what yer in for. Lemon cukes are lame. Armenian cukes… are OK… the british hothouse variety are best.

When in doubt, harvest. Just about everything will get bigger, riper, or produce more, but all that’s for nothing if it cracks, gets
woody, falls off, rots, etc. Most things are edible right along.

Eggplants are good and useful. Half a dozen of those is not unreasonable. Sweet peppers are not that exciting but good to cook
with. Put at least three or four of those in.

Stagger plantings of herbs. It all goes to seed pretty quick.

Arugula doesn’t even pass go, it just proceeds directly to seed. It makes great pesto, though.

Love,
Past Self